It is known to provide a gaming system which comprises a plurality of player operable gaming machines connected together in a network and a remote gaming base station which communicates with the gaming machines for example through the Internet. The remote gaming base station may cooperate with each of the gaming machines so that a game is partly implemented by the gaming machine and partly implemented by the remote gaming base station, or so that a game is predominantly implemented by the remote gaming base station and the gaming machine acts only as a terminal providing a player interface. This type of server-based gaming arrangement provides a flexible platform which simplifies gaming management by centralizing gaming management functions at the gaming base station. In particular, the arrangement allows games which are implementable using the gaming base station and the gaming machines to be updated centrally at the gaming base station, and expensive gaming machines dedicated to one or more particular games are avoided.
However, with such client-server type gaming arrangements, a problem can occur because several networked gaming machines typically share a common communications link with the remote base station which can cause gaming machines to compete with each other for bandwidth. This is of particular concern when a gaming machine performing a file download for the purpose of updating gaming machine software prevents another gaming machine from implementing a game.